West Bengal and Kerala are often juxtaposed under a common communist identity in most scholarly and policy discourse. We deconstruct these linkages by looking at election result data in these states in the past five decades. Our observations indicate that (i) the assumed supremacy of communist preference in the two states must be diluted, and (ii) the tendency to put both states in the same political basket must be revisited. Since election data are a direct reflection of the people’s preferences, this paper adds an important contribution to the literature by looking at the demand side of the political market.

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